Strategic, Financial and Operational Planning
Online Sales Taxes Now Valid in Three States
In this past Sunday’s (10.18.09) Parade Magazine, which is read by millions, an article caught my eye on Internet Sales Tax – “States Push for Online Sales Taxes”. This has been a recurring threat that has now taken a step forward. The States of New York, Rhode Island and North Carolina are now requiring retailers [...]
How Well Is Your Warehouse Treating Your Customers?
It never ceases to amaze me how companies will spend untold time and money to source product and find someone to buy it and then provide poor enough fulfillment services that the customer never comes back. If you consider the cost of acquiring a customer, it makes sense to me that you would do everything [...]
Transportation Turmoil
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, shipping packages becomes a little more uncertain. Certain events are adding confusion to an already unsettling situation. With outbound freight costs representing 6 – 8 % of sales and inbound another 2 – 4 % for domestic and 6 -12 % for imported product, changes to [...]
Reducing The Risk In Using Third Party Logistics
As we work with clients looking for a third party logistics option to meet their needs, a few recommendations come to mind. One of the greatest fears in giving your fulfillment function to someone else is the unknown factors of how your customers will be treated and what your cost will be for their services. [...]
Low Hanging Fruit: Is Your 3rd Party Overflow Call Center Cost Effective?
I spent this morning talking with a good friend who is the COO of a midsized business to business multichannel company. I wanted to get his take on what data and analysis they use at an executive level to make decisions and to develop strategies. He made a point that is something we believe very [...]
Escalate Retail Delivers Landed Cost Capabilities
In a recent press release, Escalate Retail has landed a beta site for its newest release. And it’s the direction the application has taken that will really allow multi channel businesses to reach peak efficiency and profitability. Here is an excerpt and one of the most important pieces of the press release:
San Diego – July [...]
One option for going direct to your customers
In this economy, everyone is looking for some kind of advantage – a way to build their brand image, how to increase product margins, reduce warehouse and logistics expenses – all while sticking to their core competencies. This can be especially difficult for consumer product goods companies and manufacturers. Often times they sell through vendor [...]
Now You Have Access to Your Data, Now What Do You Do With It?
I recently read a study by the Aberdeen Group regarding how users of BI, KPI and dashboard application benefit compared to their counterparts. This study validated several of the aspects that we have seen and gave us some new insight as well. I have added some summary points from the report, however the full document [...]
Analyzing Your Company’s Marketing ROI – 5 Problems Revealed
Recently a few of us at our firm set out to develop a sophisticated marketing business intelligence module with our partner company Taurus Software. In order to do this we decided we would meet with as many multi channel companies from $10 million in sales to $100 million in sales as possible, as well as [...]
Does an “All in One” Software Solution Really Exist?
15-20 years ago companies were often times buying most of their software from a single vendor. Order management software vendors were supplying everything – AR, AP and GL modules, manifesting, order entry and customer service, warehousing functions and a full reporting suite. Over time best of breed approaches were becoming more prevalent as niche vendors [...]
